Alex Fox, CEO, Shared Lives Plus

The Chancellor’s major Growth Review, launched alongside the Budget on 23rd March, contains radical proposals to tackle red tape experienced by some of the most creative innovators in health and social care. It names NAAPS as key to addressing these issues and sets out a timetable for eradicating difficulties caused to micro-enterprises by the misapplication of Private Hire Vehicle rules, food hygiene regulations and the lack of information often available about alternatives to traditional support. NAAPS has been campaigning for several years to exempt micro-enterprises from regulations which were not designed or intended for them, so we are really pleased with this result. http://bit.ly/ebYNv2.

The Minister of State for Care Services, Paul Burstow MP phoned me to thank NAAPS for its work. A few weeks ago, Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, used an example from our influencing work on micro-enterprise in his annual speech to the business community at Mansion House, mentioning “the care worker who was bizarrely asked to train as a taxi driver in order to be allowed to drive the people in her care into town.”

These feel like firm commitments from government and we’ve already seen re-drafted rules on Private Hire Vehicle licensing and had discussions with the Food Standards Agency on food business rules. If you are running a very small or innovative care and support business and you are running into any kind of red tape, please get in touch so that we can try to flag up as many issues as possible whilst we have this opportunity – it might not come again for a while!